Newsletter (Pro)

Newsletter and Newsletter Pro are perfect plugins to have a real newsletter on your WordPress blog. Newsletter and Newsletter Pro are easy to configure but rich in features and can make your contact list building simple and cheap.

Not only, of course. Newsletter Pro can send emails directly from your blog, collect statistics, has a built in feed by mail service and an auto-responder for follow up you new subscribers and… below a detailed list of features.

Newsletter free version is available on WordPress Plugin Directory Here, while Newsletter Pro can be downloaded from this site after sign up for a membership (see below).

IMPORTANT! Before move to Newsletter Pro, read carefully the pre-purchase note, please.

IMPORTANT! There is a new support policy for Newsletter Pro.

User Guide

I’m writing a new user guide in PDF format you can download a just started version that explain the subscription process and the subscription form: Newsletter Pro User Guide (6254).

My excuses if the documentation is actually very sparse, I’m working on it. The great part of the user guide is included on the plugin and readable after installation. Reading the user guide should not be optional…

Feature quick list

• single and double opt in with email and message fully configurable
• no limits on the number of subscribers (the database is your, you can fill it as you want)
• no limits on emails sent (but ask your provider about that, please)
• visual email editor with auto-compose feature
• email archive
• (pro) configurable feed by mail service (emails automatically sent to subscribers with your latest posts)
• (pro) link click tracking and statistics
• (pro) auto-responder/follow up: auto send pre-composed email to subscriber on specific time interval (up to 9 messages)
• subscription form and profile form fully configurable and easy translatable (I’m Italian, I know how much stressing is a plugin translation… hence no .po/.mo/,pot files)
• subscriber can change it’s preferences on profile form
• subscription widget
• (pro) ability to code you own subscription forms
• locked content management, to make some special content of your blog available only to active subscriber
• every configuration panel has hints on each field to help out in choosing the best value
• full user guide included, so it is always corresponding to installed version
• (pro) SMTP enabled

How to get Newsletter Pro

Go to the downloads page and download it if already purchased or buy from there.

Discussions and other references

To interact with other users of Newsletter or Newsletter Pro I made some “page” where to read or leave comments. I understand that a forum would be the best choice but actually I have no enough resource to setup and maintain it.

• discussions about Newsletter Free 2.5+
• discussions about Newsletter Pro 2.5+
• discussions about themes
• discussions about feed by mail service (only pro version)
• discussions about follow-up/auto-responder (only pro version)

To read the old pages: Newsletter and Newsletter Pro.

Change history and other news: about Newsletter click here, about Newssletter Pro click here.

F.A.Q.

1. When I send a newsletter, the email remains in status “sending” but never completes or runs very slow.

Newsletter sends out, if not set otherwise, 100 emails per hour in little batch of 8 emails every five minutes. To change that rate there is a setting on main configuration panel. The rate you choose MUST be compatible with your server capabilities or hosting provider limits. Ask the tech support for this kind of information.

Newsletter can send every 5 minutes IF the WordPress cron system works. If you see really big negative numbers on top of emails panel (near the “next run” label), the cron is not working. There are many reasons why this system can be faulty (low traffic, caches, …) but you can help it setting up a periodic call to the wp-cron.php file of your WordPress.

Read now how to make the WordPress cron work!

If the cron still does not seem to work, be sure it is not disabled. Check for a line like

define('DISABLE_WP_CRON', true);

on the file wp-config.php and… remove it. Some “one click install” of WordPress add it!

 2. Even if I changes the emails per hour rate (see F.A.Q. 1) the delivery is still too slow

Newsletter does not only respect the max rate you set, but checks another value, the “max execution time” of PHP. When a PHP process runs, if it takes longer than a system configured execution time, the process will be killed… and is not good if it happens during a newsletter sending. This “timeout” can be easily reached when you send via SMTP and that service is slow. Try to ask the tech support to increase the max PHP execution time.

3. The visual editor does not work

First, check if you disabled it on composer panel: there is a check box to enable and disable the visual editor (used by coders who want to write the HTML code directly without the editor natural limits).

If the editor should be enabled but still it does not work, 99% there is a plugin interfering. Many badly coded plugin inject their own code and features on other plugin pages, breaking some functionalities. I experienced that with some event manager editor, CKEditor plugin, a number of contact form plugin. Try to disable them and then check if the editor work.

If you find an interfering plugin, let me know.

4. Can I create an unsubscription/cancellation form?

No, you can’t. Unsubscription MUST start from a PERSONAL link subscriber find on your emails. That link has a token used to certify the unsubscription request. Dont’ worry to much about the absence of an unsubscription form, user decide to unsubscribe when they get an email from you, and any email should contain the cancellation link. You can also state on your site to contact you to be manually cancelled, you won’t get too many of those requests.

5. On activation I get the error “Cannot redeclare nt_post_image()…”

Only one version can be active, the free or the pro, not both. Deactivate the version you are not using anymore.

6. I got the error “Parse error: parse error, unexpected T_CONST, expecting T_OLD_FUNCTION or T_FUNCTION or T_VAR”

Ask the provider to upgrade your web space or your server to PHP 5. PHP 4, which is giving the error, is out-of-date and no more supported (neither by WordPress).

7. The {unsubscription_confirm_url} does not work (with test emails)

When this tag is replaced on TEST emails, it is not connected to a real subscriber so it cannot bring to a cancellation page and it gives the message “no user found”. The URL produced will be something like

http://www.domain.com/newsletter?na=uc&ni=0&nt=faketoken

and it’s correct. Believe me.

8. I got the error “cannot redeclare nt_post_image” or similiar

I must disable the free version if you want to work with the pro version or viceversa. The two version cannot be active at the same time since they share some parts that cannot be loaded twice.

Vote your next Newsletter feature!

On this page you can vote a list of feature not already available on Newsletter that could be added on next releases. You vote is important since I like to implement the features which satisfy as many users as possible.

Do not miss to vote!

Contents

• Must read notes
• Migration from other versions (very important)
• User Guide and Documentation
• Main configuration
• User profile
• Themes
• Feed by mail
  • How to create a new feed by mail theme
• Locked content
• Follow up/Auto responder

Must read notes

• Hosted on GoDaddy? Read (carefully) here.
• Before get Newsletter Pro, try Newsletter free version to check if your blog and hosting provider is compatible.

Migration from Newsletter Free 1.x to Newsletter Free 2.x

Newsletter 2.x is completely different and some configuration must be re-entered.

The old vaguely incompatible widget has been replaced with a new one, so you probably need to reset it. Some of you will hate me after the upgrade, but this new version is really better it worth the effort to reconfigure.

If you upgrade automatically, the should be no problems at all.

If you upgrade manually, please, PLEASE, deactivate the plugin first, then replace the whole plugin folder and the reactivate it.

Backups are mandatory!

Migration from previous versions (very important) to Newsletter Pro

From Newsletter 1.x with Newsletter Extras

Newsletter Pro is a full plug-in that replaces the standard version Newsletter and the Newsletter Extras. To install it, follow the steps below:

1. unzip the plugin package and you’ll get a folder named “newsletter-pro” with a lot of files inside it
2. upload the whole folder to “wp-content/plugins” folder of you blog: you have to end up with a folder named “newsletter-pro” inside “wp-content/plugins”
3. go to the “Plugins” WordPress panel and DEACTIVATE the plugin named “Newsletter” if you have previously installed it: no configurations or subscribers will be lost
4. on the same panel find the plugin named “Newsletter Pro” and activate it: Newsletter and Newsletter Pro share the same configuration
5. check the Newsletter Pro configuration to see if all it’s right or adjust options if needed

You can safely delete the “newsletter-extras” folder: it is no longer used.

From Newsletter Pro 2.1.x

You should already have the newsletter-pro folder inside your plugins folder. You can simply overwrite it with the new one, but to have a clean installation, delete it before (just check if you made changes to packaged file, like themes, and backup them).

You must deactivate the plugin before update it and then reactivate it.

Statistics

On Newsletter 2.5 the statistics has been changed deeply and every email sent has it’s own statistics attached. So the old statistics won’t be visible, even if the data is still present on the database.

User Guide and Documentation

One of the administration panel is dedicated to documentation with a user guide to help you in configuring Newsletter and Newsletter Pro in the right way.

Even if Newsletter is almost an “install and play” plugin, there are many things that can be fine tuned to make the newsletter service effective in your blog.

More, under every single configuration field there is a documentation box with important hints on effects of that specific configuration. Look at screenshots of next chapters to see such hint boxes.

Main configuration

Main configuration contains a lot of options:

• sender email and name
• reply to, return path and other headers
• max email per hour
• test subscribers to test everything
• locked content configuration (see the relative chapter)
• SMTP configuration (only Newsletter Pro)

Emails archive

Every time you create a newsletter it is added to your email archive. The email archive let you to prepare more than one email to be sent, send them concurrently, access email statistics (only Newsletter Pro). From the archive you can see email status and sending progress.

Themes

Theme is a general concept in Newsletter about how emails will look after sent of about how email automatically composed will be filled with content.

There is themes to auto compose regular emails, themes to compose feed by mail emails, theme to compose follow up messages. Themes are PHP file stored under special folders and you can add your own themes creating a set of folder with a special structure, as described in the user guide.

Please, be sure to carefully read the user guide to better understand the themes.

User profile

User profile is the set of data you can collect about subscribers during the subscription or on their profile panel:

• email, first name, last name
• sex
• privacy check box (for countries which requires it)
• lists/topics preference (up to 9) – read below
• generic textual/selection list profile fields (up to 19)
• follow up subscription
• feed by mail subscription
• ip address and date of subscription (for legal purposes)

Even if Newsletter lets you to collect all that data, it’s recommended to ask the subscriber the smallest set of field possible, to avoid subscription loss. May be it’s more smart to give the subscriber a more complete profile form where to fill in more data on a second time. You can offer the complete profile form just after the sign up or invite the user to complete his data with a follow up email or with a link to the profile form on newsletters you’ll send.

Subscription and profile forms, as generated by Newsletter Pro, are controlled under the “user profile” panel. There you can decide what fields to ask on subscription time and what fields on profile editing step.

You can also translate every single word in you language!

About lists: lists are not distinct set of subscribers, be aware. Lists are options a subscriber can set and unset to express some preferences. Then you can send an email only to users who specified a specific preference.

Feed by mail (only Newsletter Pro)

Feed by mail is a Newsletter Pro service that sends an excerpt of last posts to feed by mail subscribers. It’s something like Google FeedBurner and other external services. What makes the difference is:

• you can choose on what days of the week you want to send the summary (you can choose the delivery hour too)
• you can easily track the link on those auto generated emails and see the click statistics
• you can program with PHP your own theme to generate the summary adding other contents of your blog, for example a tag cloud
• subscribers can sign in and sign out of feed by mail service still remaining subscribed to your newsletter
• programming a specific theme (with PHP) you can compose summary emails totally different for each user set (for example, males and females)
• you can automatically add the service to every new subscriber

Locked content

Want make some content of your blog only available to active newsletter subscribers? No problem. With simple short code you can hide parts of posts and pages, replacing then with a message inviting the visitor to sign up for your newsletter.

It’s a GREAT feature to build up a list even if you do not use Newsletter Pro to send emails!

Follow up/Auto Responder (only Newsletter Pro)

The king of email marketing tools is the auto responder. When a subscriber accept to be part of your list, you can send him in a totally automated way a series of messages every x days.

• you can automatically add to this service new subscribers
• subscribers can cancel from the series without unsubscribe from the list
• you can easily create themes (PHP and HTML skills needed) to apply to all messages

Main configuration:

Messages configuration:

Email Statistics (only Newsletter Pro)

Statistics are collected by Newsletter Pro. I want to be totally clear and transparent about statistics: they’re not sophisticate as the ones supplied by professional mail marketing tools!

Statistics are based on link rewriting on outgoing email (you can choose to disable them) and only clicks on those links are tracked.

There is no open email tracking.

Statistics are collected for normal newsletter emails, feed by mail emails and follow up emails.

(the screeshot is taken from my italian blog and is relative to a single email)